WWII veteran series: Log partially blocks grenade

Published 11:35 am, Saturday, April 13, 2013

The Rev. R.L. Owens sits with his Purple Heart, Bronze Star and other World War II-era Army medals inside his Zephyr Street home in Plainview.

The Rev. R.L. Owens sits with his Purple Heart, Bronze Star and other World War II-era Army medals inside his Zephyr Street home in Plainview.

Photo: Shanna Sissom/Plainview Herald

WWII veteran series: Log partially blocks grenade

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NOTE: The Herald continues today a Sunday series featuring local World War II veterans.

The Rev. R.L. Owens was milking cows while listening to the radio that December morning in 1941 when he heard the news.

“I now declare a state of war,” is what Owens remembers hearing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “I remember the words just as clear as day.”

Owens, who will reach his 93rd birthday later this month, was 21 when Pearl Harbor was attacked and had already taken a physical to join the Army. But on that day, it was clear he was headed to war.

“Before that day, there had been rumors of war,” Owens said.

He was shipped to Australia for basic training from May through September the following year, then on to New Guinea.

There, Owens was seriously wounded in combat Dec. 18, 1942, during the Battle of Buna-Gona. He was in a river with water up to his neck when an enemy grenade was tossed his way and splattered his nose, resulting in profuse bleeding.

That injury would mean a lifetime of breathing problems. But Owens is grateful a log caught most of the explosion. He spent the first night at a field hospital near the combat zone; then he was flown to another hospital for several weeks. He was also suffering from malaria.

Once recovered, he went right back into combat.

“Until it was over with,” Owens said.

The Battle of Buna-Gona lasted from Nov. 16, 1942, until Jan. 22, 1943. More than 6,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and 2,300 Americans and Australians lost their lives before Allied Forces prevailed.

To this day, Owens is still grieved over the heavy casualties.

“Some things are difficult to talk about,” Owens said. “Some of my buddies were shot down. I lost several of my buddies, and you don’t ever forget that.”

Conditions were miserable, as men were plagued with illness and injury, and food was tightly rationed. The Allied Forces lived on coconuts and rice measuring just two uncooked tablespoons per day. Owens went from 185 pounds to about 100 pounds during the ordeal. At least the island cannibals left the armed soldiers alone.

“It was terrible — I don’t have the words to express how bad it was,” Owens said. “We lived just like animals.”

• • •

It was July 1944 when Owens made it back from the war. His mother and stepfather, Nora and Clinton Phillips, had moved from McLean to Plainview during the war. Owens’ father had died when he was 8.

On a 10-day leave before reporting to his new Army post in Georgia, Owens went to church with his family in Plainview that fateful Sunday morning.

“I just drowned in her pretty brown eyes,” Owens said of the girl he met that morning at Plainview’s First Assembly of God. “I said that’s the girl I want.”

Owens was almost 25, and the girl, Oleta Henegar, was 14.

Over the next eight months, Owens and Henegar exchanged letters between Plainview and Georgia.

“It was a courtship by mail,” Owens explained.

Then, when he returned to Plainview on Army leave the following March, Owens got up the courage to approach Henegar’s father after a Friday night church service. By this time, Oleta was 15.

“I had to have permission. But he said, wait until next leave,” Owens recalled. “Then I said, ‘We love each other, and I don’t want to wait.’ ”

The girl’s father knew Owens’ family from church.

“I was honest, told him I had drunk a lot and gambled a lot. I was a backslider at that time,” Owens said of his days immediately following the war. “But I told him, ‘I’m changing my life again, and I am clean as far as virtue is concerned.’ ”

Her father would sign permission and offer his blessing.

“I asked for her on a Friday night, got a license on Saturday and married her on Sunday,” Owens said. The courthouse was open on Saturday at the time.

Owens would spend much of his career in the grocery business, while rearing a family.

Remaining active in the church, Owens said he answered God’s call on his life, became an ordained minister and started preaching in 1972. He spent time pastoring in Lorenzo, Hale Center and El Paso.

The couple raised their four children in Plainview, and all graduated from Plain view High School. They include Sherita Hatch of Seth Ward, Novadell Marchette Baker of Oklahoma, Noland Merrell Owens of Round Rock and Lowell Owens of Lubbock.

Throughout the decades, he kept in touch with his war brothers and in many cases, their widows. But with few World War II veterans remaining, there are not many left to talk to.

“I very seldom get to see a World War II veteran anymore,” Owens said, pointing out that generation’s advanced age.

Even though those who fought and won World War II have been dubbed the Greatest Generation, Owens isn’t keen on the term.

“That’s an exaggeration,” Owens said. “We just did our duty like our boys are doing now. But the Vietnam boys, they never got the recognition they should.”

There’s little doubt, though, that his war experience helped shape his character for a lifetime.

“Being in combat that way, it made you appreciate life, and I thank the good Lord he got me back home,” Owens said.